In Photos: Police Clear Penn Encampment

By Jadon George & Allison Beck

After a fifteen-day standoff that placed an Ivy League institution at the center of a debate over free expression, antisemitism, and the conflict in Gaza, Philadelphia police moved Friday morning to clear the antiwar encampment on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania.

Starting just before 5:45 a.m., the Daily Pennsylvanian reported that officers in riot gear thronged the streets just outside University City and moved on the mass demonstration laid out on Penn’s College Green. Minutes later, police began clearing tents and handcuffing dozens of the protestors who had stood, demonstrated, and slept on the green since April 25. Around 8 a.m., sanitation workers moved into the space in front of Penn’s Van Pelt-Dietrich Library and set about removing the remains of the encampment.

In total, 33 protestors were arrested and released, according to the Inquirer and the Daily Pennsylvanian. A large group, many of the participants having just left jail, is currently gathering at the corner of 61st Street and Girard Avenue.

Organizers previously said that students from Penn, nearby Drexel University, Temple University, and suburban Villanova had set up on the Green to protest Penn’s involvement in Israel’s pursuit of Hamas in Gaza, staging mass chants and teach-ins, etching slogans on nearby Locust Walk, and drawing on a nearby statue of Benjamin Franklin in protest of what they called a genocide against the Palestinian people.

This is a developing story; this page will continue to update.

Photos by Allison Beck

Photos by Jadon George